In general we believe that really important things, like epidemics, are above politics. The reverse appears to be true. The more important a thing, the more it attracts political interference. It now transpires that the experimental serum ZMapp was offered to a sick African doctor first; before Dr. Kent Brantly, the medical missionary from Samaritan’s Purse received the treatment. The New York Times describes the agonizing decision of Medecins Sans Frontieres over whether to accept the offer of the serum to treat an African doctor. The problem: politics.

The doctor who had been leading Sierra Leone’s battle against the Ebola outbreak was now fighting for his own life, and his international colleagues faced a fateful decision: whether to give him a drug that had never before been tested on people.

Would the drug, known as ZMapp, help the stricken doctor? Or would it perhaps harm or even kill one of the country’s most prominent physicians, a man considered a national hero, shattering the already fragile public trust in international efforts to contain the world’s worst Ebola outbreak?

The treatment team, from Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organization, agonized through the night and ultimately decided not to try the drug. The doctor, Sheik Umar Khan, died a few days later, on July 29…

The previously untold story of Dr. Khan, recounted by two doctors involved in discussions about whether to use ZMapp, offered an unusual glimpse into the wrenching ethical dilemma of when and how experimental drugs should be used to combat the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Had the treatment team decided differently in his case, the first person treated with the drug would have been African.

The problem MSF faced was simple. If they unsuccessfully administered ZMapp to Dr. Khan they might be accused of turning black Africans into lab rats. And they couldn’t risk that. One MSF clinic had already been attacked by crowds who believed they had brought the virus from outside in the first place.

“What they really didn’t want to do was kill Dr. Khan with their attempt at therapy,” said Dr. Armand Sprecher, a public health specialist at Doctors Without Borders. “If word got out that M.S.F. killed Dr. Khan, that would have implications for outbreak control,” he added, using the initials for the French name of the relief group…. doctors feared stoking the considerable suspicion of Western medical institutions in the country, which was already making it harder to contain the outbreak.

So they didn’t give him the medicine. As I wrote a week ago before the case of Dr. Khan came to light, “the sad fact is that if they tested Zmapp on black Africans during this Ebola outbreak the media would claim they were being used as lab rats. The only acceptable way to test the new uncertified medication in Liberia was on two white Americans. That way if the serum failed the UN wouldn’t sue.” And so it proved. The success of the serum on Dr. Brantly and Nancy Writebol has reversed the situation. Now there indications it works, charges of racism are being made just the same, as in why were only white people being treated?

It’s ridiculous, but politics makes the world go round.

Politics also had a role in bringing Ebola to Nigeria. The Premium Times describes how Liberian government ministers intervened to get Sawyer on the plane, despite strong suspicions that he was afflicted with the disease.

The Liberian Government was aware that Patrick Sawyer, its citizen who brought the Ebola virus into Nigeria, had possibly contracted the virus from his late sister, yet cleared him to travel to Nigeria for a conference organised by the Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS], PREMIUM TIMES can authoritatively report today.

Documents obtained by this newspaper showed that Mr. Sawyer’s employers, ArcelorMittal, an iron mining company, suspended him from work and isolated him after it became aware that he had contact with his sister who died of the virus on July 8….

But despite being under isolation and observation for the deadly disease, the Liberian Government, through its Deputy Finance Minister For Fiscal Affairs, Sebastian Muah, cleared Mr. Sawyer to travel to Nigeria for an ECOWAS convention in Calabar. The deputy minister personally admitted approving the trip in an online discussion forum, where some Liberian citizens raised questions about his action and competence. Mr. Muah could not be reached for comments on Monday. His mobile telephone was switched off the numerous times PREMIUM TIMES called.

Nor could Mr. Mr Jatto Asihu Abdulqudir, an ECOWAS protocol official who met the stricken Patrick Sawyer at the airport and transported him to the hospital be reached for comment. The reason? Abdulqudir is dead from Ebola.

“Mr Abdulqudir, a protocol assistant, was among those who assisted the Liberian delegate to a regional meeting Mr Patrick Sawyer, who died from the Ebola Virus Disease at a Lagos hospital on 25th July 2014.”

The official had been quarantined since Sawyer was confirmed as having Ebola, which has killed more than 1,000 people since the start of the year, most of them in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Because politics trumps germs, right? Maybe not. Ebola is having its revenge. The Nigerian government guidelines on handling Ebola now regard Ebola as being transmissible by air to a limited extent. Enumerating the of modes of transmission, it lists as number “6. Inhalation of contaminated air in hospital environment”. Five days ago ECOWAS closed their Lagos office and suspended its regional meetings. The ministers are in full flight.

The shut down of the office, located within Victoria Island, is to enable health officials fumigate the buildings and the entire compound, Nigerian health officials said, adding that they were also fumigating the vehicle used in evacuating the late Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American who was the first victim of the disease in Nigeria.

Meanwhile, ECOWAS has suspended all its regional meetings, unless such meetings are “absolutely necessary” … the ECOWAS building would remain shut until the fumigation process had been concluded satisfactorily.

Does this mean Ebola is airborne in the true sense? Probably not. But this strain is perhaps more contagious than previous ones. Wait of course, for the official determination.

Sergei Brin and Larry Page told an interviewer that they were reluctant to get into the health care business because there were too many lawyers in the medical business. Brin said, “generally, health is just so heavily regulated. It’s just a painful business to be in. It’s just not necessarily how I want to spend my time. Even though we do have some health projects, and we’ll be doing that to a certain extent. But I think the regulatory burden in the U.S. is so high that think it would dissuade a lot of entrepreneurs.”

Page added “I am really excited about the possibility of data also, to improve health. But that’s– I think what Sergey’s saying, it’s so heavily regulated. It’s a difficult area. I can give you an example. Imagine you had the ability to search people’s medical records in the U.S.. Any medical researcher can do it. Maybe they have the names removed. Maybe when the medical researcher searches your data, you get to see which researcher searched it and why. I imagine that would save 10,000 lives in the first year. Just that. That’s almost impossible to do because of HIPAA.” In the battle between doctors and lawyers, the lawyers have won, hands down.

a Health Affairs report of 2009 [estimated] that physicians, on average, spend 3 hours per week dealing with insurance companies and related paperwork. Nurses and other staff invest even more time in these efforts. A 2012 perspective in the NEJM on administrative costs of care highlights findings of an IOM study, and states this: “The United States spends $361 billion annually on health care administration — more than twice our total spending on heart disease and three times our spending on cancer.”

One day, when we have mastered quantum computing, discovered the secret of cold fusion and found the principles of Warp Drive, we’ll be able to put these products on the market without unnecessary interference from the attorneys. Then, “for the second time in history, man will have discovered fire.”

Did you know that you can purchase some of these books and pamphlets by Richard Fernandez and share them with you friends? They will receive a link in their email and it will automatically give them access to a Kindle reader on their smartphone, computer or even as a web-readable document.

One day, when we have mastered quantum computing, discovered the secret of cold fusion and found the principles of Warp Drive, we’ll be able to put these products on the market without unnecessary interference from the attorneys. Then, “for the second time in history, man will have discovered fire.” – Richard Fernandez

I have long thought that such things were just around the corner, though sometimes it’s a very long trip to the corner. Quantum physics was discovered by serendipity in 1905, and the work on Quantum Physics and Quantum Mechanics was mostly completed by the 1930s. We know the names: Planck, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Bohr, Dirac, Pauli and many others. What we don’t know yet are the names in the history books for the successor to Quantum Physics, for a successor there will be, just as the Quantum succeeded Newtonian physics. I don’t know what the new physics will look like, but I feel certain it will change everything, just as Quantum physics changed everything. The speed of light will prove to be no stumbling block to interstellar travel, and in a just world each year the graduating class of Harvard Law School will be put on a ship and sent to a cold and distant planet somewhere in the vicinity of Sirius. I spoke of this to my friend Og, and this is what he said:

Before his cave mouth streaked with sootMy friend Og sat at easeA scraggly dog lay by his footUntroubled by his fleasWhat think you, Og? I smiled and saidThe stars are in our reachAnd medicine, by what I’ve readHas marched well past the leechOg rubbed a fist on stubbled beardAnd looked me in the eyeAnd said, That ain’t what I just heeredSome feller said the skyWas smaller now with slower lightAnd here he spat with scornThem lawyer fellers just last nightCome back afore they’re bornI knowed inventin’ fire’d leadTo foolery one dayAnd now dependin’ who you readThere mought be hell to payThem lawyers sent to SiriusThey took ‘em fastern lightAnd somethin’ real mysteriousGave everyone a frightLike Einstein said when you go fastThe clock slows down your timeThese lawyer fellers they went pastThe speed that light can climbSo when they ended up the tripAnd opened up the doorThere wan’t no body in the shipJust clothes there on the floorThey ain’t been born yet, understandTime winded back the clockThey brought the ship home backwards andIt’s sittin’ in the dockI never liked this science stuffNo good can come, I fearThe fire, yes, was good enoughAnd maybe good malt beerBut otherwise we take a chanceUnleashing somethin’ meanNo reason we just got to danceWith atoms and the geneI left him there, his drinking hornHis club and dog at handAnd dreamed of lawyers never bornAnd knew that life was grand

Being called a racist, rich, white ....( fill in the blank) is not about any logical thought process. It's Pavlovian leftism...drooled out on reflex.

I realize that over lawyering is an enormous problem. So is the sleazy plaintiif's bar that creates most of the problems. But Andy McCarthy, Christian Adams (and others) are lawyers who fight against the scourge.

Back in the day I was told the military had a great recruiting line to offer doctors, besides the one about nurses. While it is true that physicians in the military, despite bonuses, are paid a fraction of what they might earn in civilian life the armed forces can offer something. There is a whole separate staff corps of officer called the Medical Service Corps in each branch devoted to handling the paper. Army Veterinaries and a few other specialties are also in the MSC. Prospective military doctors were told they won't have to touch paper. That was a powerful incentive. I do not know how it is now.

Politics may seem like an externality,. It is easy to view it as sand in the gears that just raises costs and slows thing down. What is the alternative? Even a simple market requires prior consent about some basic rules. That is politics. Politics is setting the rules for transactions that are not purely personal. The only alternative is autocratic domination raised beyond the point of theocracy.

In a functioning Democratic culture the costs of decision making are low and the increase in productivity are high. For it to work you need a people, the voters or just the populace but what is important their opinions matter, whose trust the politicians have earned, and the reciprocal is true. That means a people schooled in exercising good judgement and weighing the costs of choices. That takes a people largely reliant on their own resources and not dependent on "magic checks."

In Africa the doctors could not trust the people to support an informed choice. In America Health Care with the institution of bureaucratic regulation and Dr. Emanuel's Death Panels is taking a step back towards the 19th century. A hundred or more years ago the physician was a form of priest, making decisions for your own good.

By debasing the people with the poisons of irrationality, race or gender or religious or other class and grievance group based discrimination, it has become impossible to solve most problems by a simple unpolitical examination of the facts. All problems are now personal and the personal is now political.

Did his life hinge on political and bureacratic considerations? Those could be downstream from practical judgment. Why was everything political with no honor for the private? The thought occurred to me that if you held the life of the doctor above the political considerations, you could refrain from informing the public about administering the drug, but privately offer it to him. Or does that destroy the system of trust of those involved in his care and treating the outbreak, meaning the secret could not be kept? Is refraining from publishing that act the same as lying?

I also think you could argue the considerations whether to administer the drug were based on weighing human nature, our propensity to scapegoat, rather than mere political considerations. It is an interesting question what happens when trust breaks down, what is required to sustain it, whether faith is possible, how it develops over time and expresses itself in values, and how banal evils and daily lies destroy it. The judgement would be whether enough faith remained to withstand the criticisms and consequences of going ahead with the test drug. There was no mob crying out to crucify the doctor, just those waiting to capitalize on whatever choice was made. I can't help but think there had to be an alternative way to get the doctor the drug.

Our esteemed host has had to deal with what appear to be organized attacks with the intent of disrupting this blog and shutting down discussion. Think about that without getting either to vain or to paranoid. What we do here is important enough to attract attention.

My comments are not a call to agree on substance. There are many regular commentators here that I disagree with on matters I consider important or trivial, as I shudder when I see evidence of OCD cut and pastes. I would regret the departure of any who are not seeking to attack the Club. wretchard has shown great restraint in managing this community. We should not repay his efforts with discourtesy, to the blog or each other.

It galls that wretchard had developed an excellent set of user tools, with voting, messaging, and an Ignore feature, just before PJM changed the interface and undid his work. There is a general consensus regarding the PJM interface and the introduction of unnumbered comments with nested replies. Those eager to show off a knowledge of linguistics or certain dynamic engineering and biology concepts can insert appropriate descriptive terms.

In general it would help if in many cases the urge for a quick retort was checked and notes were made on a word processor, with a reference to the person being replied to. That is clumsier than having a number to cite but we know that and need to deal with it and move on. Instead of making numerous short replies then it is better to make an aggregate entry every few hours, after having time to review the notes and see if there is a larger point to be made. I try to do that and judge the quality of my efforts by the "likes" generated and more important the follow on comments. Usually I am disappointed. Then if people want to have an extended back and forth about the relative merits of .44 or .45 caliber ammunition or piston fighter aircraft they could take it from the live thread to one from the day before. We used to do that.

Give Old Doug and Teresita a break and maybe they can try writing their comments down and posting them as a group every couple of hours. On some topics, like religion, a simple reminder of where to find a counterargument may suffice.

Ok, what then are the relative merits of .40 and .45 ammo vs piston engine fighter aircraft? Strikes me as an awful strange comparison. Kind of pointless since possession of a piston engined fighter implies possession of from (4) .30 to (6) .50 machine guns; and I'd argue that even 'just' a .30 mg is superior to either .40 or .45 ammo.

With rules come extenuating circumstances. In the case of Old Doug there are such circumstances, which I am not going to enumerate. Suffice to say that Old Doug may need camaraderie, feigned or possibly sincere. The best laws are those which temper justice with mercy. In time, I am sure things will even out and gentlemen can get back to pithy comments that both flatter vanity and save the world.

As to the Elephant Bar, why must this site be sullied with reports of bad German and discordant jackboots. That site has four regular Schutzstaffel, a Canadian jihadi, and a half-dozen brown-shirted sock puppets. Enough already.

The "victim" was the primary suspect in a robbery and there is video of him committing the act. The officer was responding to that. And the primary witness to the shooting has been identified as a the victim's accomplice in the robbery.

The dialog is now shifting to "Was a $43.00 box of cigars enough justification for shooting the robber?" I guess we have to ask how much money justifies shooting the robber when he resists arrest. If not $43, then $143?, $1430? $14300?

This does relate to ebola, because so much of black crime and the associated response to it amounts to black people wishing to impose their own standards. Zimmerman should have just let Trayvon whale away on him for a while - it's a black standard. Brown should have got the cigars for free - it's a black standard, sort of reparations. Black kids in DC should be able to make $5K a month acting as lookouts for drug dealers. And so on.

And in Africa people should be able to follow their ancient rituals for burying the dead - and then have the rest of the world rush in to save them. They set the standards and everyone else has to accomodate them - otherwise it's racism.

Seemingly very few citizens are aware of the magnitude of responsibility customarily placed on law enforcement officers by the laws of their respective states and municipalities. Generally, once a police officer has told a person that he or she is "under arrest" and places hands on 'em, the officer is obliged to secure that person and maintain custodial control until they are properly booked and processed. NO DISCRETION IS ALLOWED. The officer CAN NOT ALLOW that person to go free, just because the subject does not want to be arrested and detained. This occasionally leads to very unhappy resolutions, because there are people who might be innocent of any crime, and for one reason or another may be reluctant to submit, and they resist and end up getting their @$$es stomped... only to have it revealed afterward that a spouse had just died of cancer or a child was sick or they'd lost their job or house or some such thing.

But the law officers CAN'T know these things, and nor can they allow a person simply to walk away once the process has been initiated. Maybe we need to return to teaching basic citizenship classes to kids again.

Wretchard is a damn fine writer -- on that we can all agree. The comments on Wretchard's blog used to add substantially to the value of this site. This place was like a fine debating society, where someone would rise to challenge the remarks made earlier by the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Then PJM "improved" the site with the Reply button, and it degenerated from a fine debating society into a cocktail party, with lots of simultaneous separate discussions merging into a distracting cacophony. A real come-down from linear debate, but apparently a significant minority of contributors wanted their separate discussions.

And now one of the guests at the cocktail party has become drunk and loud and boorish and overbearing, and is drowning out all the other discussion. Yes, "Old Doug", I am talking about you.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Wretchard's Admirers! Let's choose to return to a better time. Eschew use of the Reply button. Show respect for our host by adhering to his 4 post guideline.

K -- Was it 5 years ago, 7? there was a BC poster named Doug who posted maniacally on all kinds of things, using the BC comments section for anything that came into his fingertips, way off topic and in maniacal abundance, incredibly rude, incredibly annoying. If I remember correctly our kind host Mr. Fernandez finally had to take him to the woodshed and banish him or something...all I know is that he wasn't around for years. Is that Doug back now? Seems like it...do we need to draw up a petition to our kind host?

There are other blogs with tighter rules, and they are correspondingly very, very tidy, with no comments. The Elephant Bar used to be the rowdy afterparty of the BC until it crossed a line became a wretched hive of misogyny and anti-Semitism, driving the cool kids off, and now it is closing in on tidy status. So neat freaks, be careful what you wish for.

ottawagirl and erico,It is possible to argue that in theory homogeneity could work against Democracy. The family is a natural social unit that is not democratic. In homogenous societies the line between the family and the greater society can become blurred. Tribes and clans serve as aggregates of families where the undemocratic social mechanisms of the smaller units are replicated on a larger scale.

For Democracy to work there has to be politics. For politics to function, unless you descend into the reductio of declaring everything including getting a child to eat their vegetables to be political, there have to be transactions between parties with standing and differing interests on some level.

My model draws a distinction between negotiations and transactions that can best be modeled as economic and those where choices are determined and resources allocated in ways that are not at first appearance monetized. In fact the distinctions are small. Another model for political choice in a formalized sense of dispute or choice resolution is the legal system. For it to work you must have a disagreement between two parties. If they agree about everything, or if they simply agree that "Daddy" gets to make all choices for their good, then what you have is a family but not a polity.

The trick is that while there have to be competing groups negotiating with each other for politics to work it is also true that there must be shared values. Until 50 years ago we were successful in America in imparting a respect for at least the forms of those values to marginalized or immigrant communities.

Gee, if this is right, the Media are sure a little lacking in getting the story out, unless they are doing it on TV, which I don't watch:

"I have lived in that area before for 8 years so if you haven't then let's get a few facts out. Fergusen is a very very very very raceist city. They also do not take kindly to even whites not born in that city. There is a lot of blame to go around on this one. the cop was on a power trip and his judgment was beyond poor. He gave an order and drove off. he looked back saw the teens walking in the street still came back with his car less then 2 feet fro this kid. The officer whipped the door open striking the kid. In response he shoved te door closed as the cop was trying to exit. The cop grabs him through the window by the throat and trys to detain him. Thjey struggle yes and the officer fires a single shot. At this point the kid gets loose and flees. The officer gets out and chases on foot at about 35 to 40 feet behind. He orders him to stop then fires a round into the kids back. At that time this kid stops turns to the officer hands raised above his head and the cop still 30 plus feet away fires multiple shots into a non armed, non life threating, surrending citizen.... Im not sure what kind of idiot can even attempt to defnd this part of what this cop did. I am amazed at how raceist these commenter are and they do not even seem to understand what happened or the law in the least bit."He goes on:http://clashdaily.com/2014/08/thug-life-leaked-pics-michael-brown-show-really/

There was a single eyewitness to the Trayvon Martin shooting, Mr. Good. The prosecution had no choice but to call him as a witness. His testimony destroyed the prosecution’s “case”. And for those who continue to make the claim that any part of the case had to do with Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” statute, you are WRONG. Prior to trial, the judge and both teams of lawyers took that off the table. Zimmerman was tried for murder or some derivative thereof. PERIOD.

Had Trayvon followed Mr. Good’s stern admonishment, given three times, and released Mr. Zimmerman, he would not have been shot once, fatally. Yes, I know, witnesses claimed that Zimmerman fired from 2 -4 times. He did not. His pistol was hot and he discharged the single round in the chamber. To his credit, Mr. Zimmerman hesitated much longer than circumstances required.

I grew to adulthood in St. Louis, Missouri and was employed there on occasion. Ferguson is an equal opportunity s**t hole and has been since massive white flight in the 50s-70s and loss of manufacturing jobs.

Population by RaceWhite 6,206African American 14,297Asian 103American Indian and Alaska Native 80Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander 4Other 92Identified by two or more 421

The truth of Trayvon was different in the NYT than on the trial transcript.The Trayvon verdict was far different in the courthouse than on the street. Under oath and close examination a fact is often at a far remove from the corner. And that three pairs of "free" shoes and a new LED are a poor substitute for justice.

This is just the new Trayvon Martin narrative, and therefore doesn't budge my interest in the slightest, except to wonder when it will be over. Maybe on October 4 when there's a major terrorist attack on Obama's "watch". 9-11 call the cops, 10-4, over and out.

Good to know Eric Holder is the nation's chief law enforcement officer.

esp in states like AZ, where Holder is prosecuting them for trying to enforce our nation's immigration laws.

oops: Whitehouse.gov : "The power of the Executive Branch is vested in the President of the United States, who also acts as head of state and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. The President is responsible for implementing and enforcing the laws written by Congress and, to that end, appoints the heads of the federal agencies, including the Cabinet. The Vice President is also part of the Executive Branch, ready to assume the Presidency should the need arise."